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Monday, 6 January 2014

Fun things to do with toddlers - ball shuttle run

This activity sort of evolved one week day evening, my toddler had watched Monsters University and was inspired by a scene where two characters race each other, he was posing as if on starting blocks then running up and down from the back door in the living room, through the living room to the front door. I decided to make his running a bit more purposeful by placing a bucket by the front door and a small pile of plastic balls by the back door.

I showed him how he could pick up a ball and run with it to the front door and drop it in the bucket. But his mama didn't raise no fool, he took two balls at a time! Clever boy!

Then I remembered something I had seen on Pinterest with a child dropping balls down a paper towel tube taped to a wall. I had always thought this was quite a fun idea except that my son would probably get board with it pretty quickly, so I decided to adapt this idea by taping a crisp tube to the wall above the bucket. My son loved it! He spent quite a while running back and forth with the balls and even carrying the bucket back to the living room and emptying the balls out onto the floor to start again. He needed a bit of help replacing the bucket to underneath the tube as sometimes he was putting it into the wrong place and the balls were dropping on the floor.

A fun activity that kept him entertained for quite some time, and gave him a good burst of exercise to tire him out! Also built on his fine motor skills and problem solving skills.

Have you come up with any new fun activities for toddlers recently? I would love to hear about them, also share your blog posts about activities you do with your toddler.

2 comments:

This is a great idea. I've got a couple of empty Pringles tubes I've been wondering what to do with. My children are slightly older now but they love making obstacle courses and I think this could work really well within an obstacle course.